Monday, 17 April 2017

The end of Western institutions? What next?

Almost all large, powerful, high status Western social institutions (including churches) are now very corrupt indeed, and getting even worse. This means that they are not even trying to do what is supposed to be their function.

(Schools and colleges are not trying to educate, military and police not trying to defend, philosophy and science not trying to discover truth, law not trying to to be just, art not trying to create beauty etc.)

For those who have noticed this and acknowledged the near completeness of destruction - especially at the level of leadership and management, who are broadly as strategically-evil-as-they-can-get-away-with - the usual proposal is either radical reform of existing institutions; or their abolition and replacement with new and functional institutions.

But maybe this is the end. After all, this corruption has been proceeding unabated for several generations. Maybe institutions are just a phase in the evolution of human consciousness - and the best imaginable future is post-institutional...

Institutions are all deeply flawed by the way that the institution comes first and individual persons must be moulded (or mould themselves) to fit-into them - this is fundamentally unideal in a creation where each man and woman is unique and has an unique destiny.

It seems that the original human societies - of small nomadic tribes - lacked institutions, and were built around the relationships, dispositions, talents and motivations of the individuals who constituted them - and maybe that is how humans are ideally meant to be; and maybe institutions are a regrettable necessity imposed by coercion as a response to violence and want...

Maybe the destiny of Man (one way or another, by an easy-pleasant way potentially, but more likely a path of extreme suffering imposed by our evil choices) is to go beyond institutions; for the wheel to turn full circle and return to a pre-institutional non-organisation - but this time 'inhabited' by very different people...

Such could only happen after Men have become better; after Men have become spiritual Christians advanced in consciousness; but if (or when) this eventually happens, I would suppose that the future is non-institutional.

Meanwhile - Men are not better (but instead worse) and we cannot do without institutions, and they need to be as good as we can make them - and we must strive to be honest and demand honesty and reality from the actually-existing institutions.

But it may well be that they are on-the-way-out, and that institutions are no more than a stop-gap, and fundamentally unsaveable - and therefore institutions may never be revitalised.